Disclaimer: I own nothing but my original characters and works; all other characters and worlds belong to their respective owners. I'm just playing with them.
Betad by Priapus, Marethyu, Malcolm Tent, Beans
The Guild of Gamers: The Necromancer
Chapter 10: The Blood Moon Begins
– Joan Arc –
"Hell of a time to come to beginner island, huh?" someone asked, making her jump and spin around, dropping her sword. The ginger-haired girl looked amused, watching Joan stutter something.
"What-" Joan started, forcing down her embarrassment.
"Jumpy, huh? Considering the imminent horde of empowered monsters that are going to rape and murder everyone, can't say I blame you," she replied with far too much casualness as someone came running up, a Mistralian looking man with a tired look in his eyes.
"Nora," he stated, getting her attention.
"Yeah, yeah. Hi! I'm Nora, and this is Rennie," Nora introduced, offering a hand. Joan took it, her arm almost pulled out of its socket by the force Nora shook it. 'Rennie' introduced himself as Lie Ren, with another tired look. "You're a beginner, right?"
Nora nodded to the copper emblem Joan was wearing proudly.
"Y-yeah. Everyone said Patch is the best place to learn the ropes, you know?" Joan admitted, face pale as she looked up into the red sky. "I'm Joan."
She didn't give her last name, not wanting to get their hopes up that she lived up to her house's reputation for making powerful knights. She was here because she didn't live up to that reputation, hoping to get some practical experience against easy enemies. She wasn't ready for a Blood Moon, but then… who was?
All she'd done so far was a couple of gathering quests, where she'd fought a single wolf and a lone goblin. And she almost lost to the goblin. Fuck, she'd had to get a job working as a barmaid because she couldn't pay for food and lodgings of her pathetic earnings. Questing was expensive, you could easily spend more than you earnt if you didn't know what you were doing, and she… did not know what she was doing. She overprepared and spent more on supplies than the quest actually paid out.
"It is. Same reason we are here," Nora explained, reaching into her cleavage to pull out an amulet with her emblem on it, copper as well. Ren showed his, which he was wearing as a bracelet. "But we picked the worst time to be here, huh?"
There was no fleeing Patch. A blood moon would drive the sea monsters into a frenzy. No ship was going to come to Patch, and no one was crazy enough to try to leave by ship. It'd be a feeding frenzy, with them as the chum. So, here they were, on the walls, watching as more and more monsters wandered out of the forest. More than Joan had ever seen, and the main horde wasn't even close to being here yet. All adventurers on the island had been called to arms, and she had been given a bow. When she admitted she didn't really know how one worked, they'd bluntly told her that aiming wasn't going to be a problem.
Soon, there would be so many targets that it would be nearly impossible to miss.
"Don't look so grim, Joanny. We have two mages on our side, and three Adamantite adventurers," Nora reassured her. She could tell Nora wasn't as confident as she was trying to sound, as the last Blood Moon had wiped out an entire fortified city in Vacuo. Patch had walls, but they weren't made to withstand a true assault. At worst, they were made for dungeon breaks, which were considerably less dangerous than a Blood Moon.
A blood moon was a dungeon break every night for up to a week, with all the monsters pouring out being empowered. If a dungeon break meant a thousand monsters, a Blood Moon would be in the tens of thousands, and they were all stronger and often included many stronger monsters than would normally be encountered.
"Anyway, I wanted to ask if you wanted to group up with us? Newbies like us should stick together, and the Guild is telling all the solo adventurers to group up before we get our marching orders," Nora explained.
"You want me?" Joan asked, surprised. "Why?"
Did they know she was an Arc?
"Because you're the only solo adventurer left, I think. Most already had formed parties, and we want at least three," Ren admitted bluntly.
"Ah," Joan replied, rubbing the back of her neck. She was the bottom of the barrel they were forced to scrape up? Yeah, that made more sense. "Y-yeah, that works for me. What is going on? I've been on wall duty all day."
"Dunno, yet. They've spread word to group up into parties, and that we'd be assigned jobs 'based on party ability and experience'. We'll sign up as an official party before the big meeting later today," Nora admitted, looking a little embarrassed, before it hit her. They'd picked the worst adventurer on the island to get easier jobs. Nora looked ashamed, but she hid it well. They were using her to drag them down a level so they wouldn't be given more serious and more dangerous jobs.
"When is the meeting?" Joan asked, not calling them out. She got the feeling that they both knew that she knew, but nobody wanted to say it out loud. She had heard of Nora and her skill with her massive hammer, and Ren was supposed to be a great scout. They were in the upper-tier of the copper ranks, only held back by the lack of a full party. Adding her to their party would pull them back down to the middle of the pack at best.
She'd seen the looks the girl behind the desk gave her when she came back from a quest to gather medical herbs with torn clothes and a bloodied face. It was as easy a quest as they came, and she'd barely escaped with her life or chastity. A single goblin should be no threat to any adventurer, even a copper one. For her, it had been the hardest fight of her life and one she only won because she'd put up such a pathetic fight that the goblin hadn't treated her like a threat after it had disarmed her.
If she hadn't managed to grab a rock to hit it over the head with, that would have been the end of it.
"They'll blow a horn to tell us all to come in, apparently. The Guildmaster, Qrowe the Reaper and the Bloody Rose all set out to check the dungeon, and we're waiting for them to get back before we get our assignments," Ren explained. "Glynda the Good Witch is managing the Guild for now. She was the one to tell everyone to use the calm before the storm to find party members."
Despite the seriousness, she did feel her heart soar a little at the names. Three active Adamantite adventurers and a famous mage? It had to mean something, right?
"What about the other mage? Rowan, right?" Joan asked, getting a shrug from Nora.
"Dunno. I saw him talking with the Guildmaster and Glynda, but he went his own way," Nora admitted. "But he's as new as we are, right? I've not seen his party, the Black Roses, either. Guess we'll have to wait and see what the magic man has in store for us."
She should be offended at the idea of being used as a deadweight, but… she didn't want to be given a more dangerous mission either. The idea of dying here terrified her. As she was relieved of watch, they headed to the temporary Guild HQ to register, since the main building was outside of the walls and right now it was abandoned, like all buildings beyond the safety of the walls. Anyone living outside the village had been ushered into Patch itself. She'd been watching adventurers head out to various homesteads to help escort people back to safety all day.
It also meant that Patch was crowded at the moment, with far too little housing for this many people. She'd heard that only about forty percent of the island's population actually lived in the village itself, which meant they currently had around twice as many people as usual inside the walls.
Ren, being the responsible one from what Joan could tell, approached the overworked guild girl, whose name Joan still didn't know, reporting that they'd partied up. Joan was expecting a judgmental look, frankly, because if she could tell what was going on, so could the Guild. Instead, the girl just acknowledged it and moved on instantly.
"Okay, I have your assignment," the guild girl responded, tiredness clear in her tone. She didn't sound like she'd slept last night. "You're on body retrieval duties. There was a skirmish at the west gate last night. Your job is to bring the corpses of both fallen adventurers and slain goblins, hobgoblins and orcs into the walls. Fallen adventurers are to be placed just inside the wall. You'll be given drop-off locations for the monster bodies. You are not to fight. Ren, you'll be on scout duties while Joan and Nora move the bodies. If you see incoming monsters, you are to retreat back inside the walls. There will be a cart waiting for you to use."
"Understood," Ren replied instantly, and Joan couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. Carrying stuff? Even dead stuff? She could do that. She was pretty strong, physically at least. It ran in her family, the leftover magic from their heroic ancestor.
…but why were they moving the dead monsters as well?
– Rowan Blackwood –
Within my temporary workshop, (set up because we had to leave the Xiao Long home, being outside the walls and all) I've got access to basically whatever I want. Tai made it clear to every merchant and the representatives of whatever guilds have a presence on Patch that I am to be given anything and everything I ask for, as it might be the difference between Patch surviving the night or becoming a lifeless ruin.
As much as there's drama and politics between the different Guilds, survival is one hell of an equaliser. They're not going to haggle prices for stone or metal when I'm making devices that could mean they survive to haggle another day.
But even still, things are not as smooth as they could be for a variety of reasons. It became clear, very quickly, that my issue here isn't 'what can I make' but 'what can I make in time' as while plans flooded my head for defensive weapons, many would require precise parts or materials that I either don't have because they're just not available on Patch, or don't have the time to make them.
What I need is simple but effective weaponry. No elaborate parts that I need to spend hours working at a forge. I need things I can make quickly that will do the most good against giant hordes of near-mindless monsters.
The blood moon turns monsters into 'Grimm' variants, their skin turning black, with white bone 'armour' growing on their bodies, but it also reduces their intelligence and makes them berserkers. Grimmified monsters will charge at the nearest settlement with exactly one plan, slaughter as much as possible.
So, we have a decent idea of the direction they'll be coming from. They won't use tactics; they'll burst from the dungeon and charge straight at Patch. The attacks at the moment are coming from the monsters that were already outside of the dungeon. The main horde will hit the north-west gate first. The only reason we have to enforce the other gates is that the numbers mean they'll spread along the wall. It's not like they're going to queue up patiently and wait for their turn at the closest gate.
Which means, theoretically, if we can kill them fast enough, they'd never spread out and keep coming from the same direction. It's not going to be that simple, of course, but it means most of the defences need to be along the north-west gate.
The biggest threats are going to be trolls and ogres, with the strength to damage or even destroy the stone walls. Goblin spider-riders and monstrous giant spiders could climb the walls, but burning oil and water are being prepared to pour down on them, and adventurers will be waiting at the top to drive them back down. If something climbs the wall, we can adapt. If the wall gets damaged enough to be broken open? We lose.
They'll flood the holes and overwhelm the defenders, slaughtering everything in Patch.
For as long as the blood moon is in the sky, the swarm will not stop. We have to last until daybreak, wiping out the leftovers, and then use the day to recover for the next night. Plus, it's not like they just go away when the sun rises. They'll be weakened by the loss of the blood moon, but any that had already been on the way will continue, so we'll have to do repairs and recovery while fighting off the smaller numbers.
So, what can I make in time?
Mortars. I can make mortars. The issue with the grenades I've made is that they just don't have the range we need. By the time they are in range of something you need to throw, it means they'll be at the wall, and we risk damaging it ourselves by using explosives. Mortars, set in fixed positions, can have modified grenades placed into them and fired by just about anyone.
Ruby and the Smith's Guild are making the metal parts, since it's basically just a thick metal tube before I do my work. The Stonemason's Guild are making the base for the runestones, so I just need to enchant them. I don't have time to carve them myself, and anything I can pass off to others will give me more time to do what needs to be done.
The mortar's tilt will be fixed so they can only aim at specific distances, so nobody can accidentally blow up their allies. They can still change direction, but no mortar shell will land inside the village. Since we know where the monsters are coming from, picking out the best spots to set them up wasn't hard. I need these to be foolproof because I'm placing artillery pieces in the hands of men who think bows are the pinnacle of ranged warfare.
The mortars will thin out the horde, killing weaker enemies with bombardments of ice, fire and lightning. We're not going to have enough to last the estimated week, but with others making the base for the runestones, copying my designs, I just need to do the actual enchanting part, and that doesn't take as long as you'd think.
Finishing my spell, I watch as this batch of goblins rise up, groaning as their flesh rots away. Tai was right, he could get me bodies. I've been alternating between working in the workshop and raising the dead as our cannon fodder. With the weapons we'll be deploying, it will be too dangerous to deploy most adventurers outside of the walls, but we need to slow down the horde and force them to waste time when they're in the range of our weaponry.
Skeletons are ideal for that because lightning and fire are less effective against pure bone, and while our mortars will damage the skeletons, they'll do far more to the living monsters they're fighting. Plus, I can replace these with the bodies of whatever we kill tonight, so losing them won't matter. Keeping the living adventurers fighting at range and the undead tanking the damage is our best chance at keeping our numbers high.
It doesn't matter if we survive the night if we lose half our manpower in the process. We need to survive each night with minimal losses to have a chance of holding out. Death by a thousand cuts is just as likely as us being overwhelmed entirely. We're already in such a fucked position that they're handing farm boys bows and iron swords like this is Helms Deep.
My second creation is equally simple. Mines. Converting my grenade supply into mines is not hard, as all I have to do is make the trigger method pressure-activated. Since we know the direction they're coming from, making the forest in that direction a minefield is a good call to slow them down and thin the numbers further without risking the wall or defenders.
Of course, there's the issue of us having to deal with the mines that don't get detonated, but Tai said that if we're alive to worry about them later, that's a victory. There are no civilians expected from that direction, and the only adventurers out that way are Summer, Qrowe and Tai, who know to avoid the area we marked out as the minefield.
Yang is working with some more experienced adventurers to handle that because while the process is technically very simple, again, I'm giving guys with iron swords mines and telling them to go plant them. In an ideal world, I could work in some better trigger method that makes sure it's not being set off by a mistepping human. This isn't that world, because I don't have time to create a fucking IFF rune, so the mine is just 'you step on this after it's activated, you blow up'. If I had a week or two, I could make it safer, but I don't. As such, only experienced adventurers that the guild thinks can be trusted to handle these are being sent out.
If we get through that process with only one or two adventurers blowing themselves up, I'll take it as a win.
I've also started making runestone arrowheads, but they're still in limited supply thanks to the lack of time. Again, I can have other people make the arrows themselves and just have to carve the runes but it's still a time consuming process. I'm trusting Fran with a quiver of them, but we don't have many more to spread around the other talented archers.
I should have started making weapons sooner, not waited until an emergency. I should have, at the very least, armed Qrowe, Summer and Tai with runestone weaponry, but for now only my party have true enchanted gear. Everyone else is getting scraps and leftovers.
As for Fran? I don't necessarily trust her, but she's too good an archer for me to leave her in her cage. She knows I have her soul, she knows the cost of us losing. I don't need to trust her to trust that she doesn't want to die under the blood moon. She can't run either. Where would she go? All the ships are in the port, and she can't go beyond the wall because there are monsters everywhere.
"Join the others," I order, combining it with a mental command as the latest group of goblin and hobgoblin skeletons shamble away to where they'll be armed and sent into the fray. Glynda insisted on testing them in combat before the main horde arrives, so they're aiding in the defences on the east wall, closest to the temporary headquarters of the Adventurer's Guild where she can keep an eye on them. It also helps me test my control at range, but we've found that they generally understand my will enough to follow my orders and only attack monsters. Even if an adventurer attacks them (which has happened three times so far), they just stand there.
What we've also discovered is that monsters don't attack them, at first. They don't register as living, so monsters just… ignore them until my undead make the first move. They will attack if my undead get in between them and the living, which we tested by literally having the skeletons form a wall, bony shoulder to bony shoulder. The monsters did not appreciate it.
What this means is that a lot of my skeletons are going to 'play dead', by lying around in the path we expect the monsters to come from, so they can spring up and catch the enemy by surprise. Most of them will be arranged to take the brunt of the horde, but the rest will be laid around the forest waiting to spring up and kill any monsters that walk past them. I expect to lose basically all the skeletons I've sent to do that, but again, if we can just disrupt and weaken the horde, it works in our favour.
Basically, everything we are doing is just to make sure that we have a better chance of actually winning the fight at the walls. Working on raising more dead until I feel that burn that comes with mana exhaustion, I head back inside. Carving runes doesn't actually take much mana from me, so I'm alternating between necromancy and artificing depending on my mana pool. Raise the dead when I have mana to spare, craft when I need to wait for it to recover.
Still, I have to admit that Summer and Tai were right. I've been looking at my necromancy through the eyes of someone from my world, where it's always the 'evil' magic. Because the adventurers of Patch are relieved to have undead boneshields between them and the main horde. Sure, it's seen as a gift of the Goddess of Darkness, but even that isn't seen as a bad thing, as about 40% of all magic comes from her.
"This one is finished!" Ruby shouts as she enters, two men behind her carrying a heavy metal tube. She wasn't kidding about being an apprentice smith herself, and she's damn good for her age.
"Put it on the workbench, please. Has the stand been set up on the western watchtower?" I ask, getting a confirmation. "Excellent. We should have all five done by sunset at this rate. Any word from the masons?"
"Miss Goodwitch is moving the crate of finished stones here. They're going to keep making more through the night, so you have more to turn into runestones tomorrow," Ruby informs me, wringing her hands together as she thanks the two men who leave, likely on their way to help with the reinforcing. Pits to be dug, spikes to be planted. Patch is used to dungeon breaks, and a Blood Moon is just a very, very bad dungeon break if you squint enough. "Do you think we have enough?"
No.
"Maybe," I answer, frowning. "The larger stones mean a larger blast, so as long as we use them efficiently and ration them out, we should have enough to last the night."
That's true, at least. I just don't think the guys who are seeing a mortar for the first time will use them effectively. No matter how much I've babyproofed them, there's going to be issues with the simple fact that nobody, not even I, have used these before. We're fieldtesting them during an apocalypse. At best, we're still going to be facing people wasting them out of fear. We need to use them at the best possible time, prioritising larger groups of clustered monsters, but with the chaos of the night, I'm willing to bet they'll fire at any group, no matter how small.
"What are you working on now?" Ruby asks, a mixture of worry and interest in her tone. Knowing she wants a distraction, I smile at her.
"Your weapon for the night," I admit, moving over to my workspace. "I only have time to make one of these, and I need someone I can trust to use it. With your staff, you're the only one to have any real experience with this type of weapon and I can't use it since I need to be free to command my undead and cast my spells."
Revealing my 'masterpiece', I hear her let out an ooh at the frankly shoddy-looking weapon. Anyone from my world would recognise it as a rudimentary minigun, but really it's just eight staves bound together and attached to a stone chair for the gunner, as the recoil would knock anyone on their ass.
"Because this will be stationary, I can make it much bigger and increase its fire rate and power considerably because it can be stuck into a larger, stationary power source. It's going above the gate, where you'll be stationed, firing down at the hordes as they come," I explain, seeing her bite her lip.
"How are we going to get it there? It looks heavy," Ruby asks, running her fingers along the barrel.
"Glynda is going to move it into place," I explain. Her telekinesis is far stronger than mine. "It's just a hunk of stone and metal until connected to the power source I've already had moved to the gate, so there's no risk. We're going to win this, Ruby. I promise."
Placing my hand on hers, I give her a confident smile that I don't particularly feel. Her returning one is far brighter as she beams at me.
"Of course we will, we have you," Ruby says confidently, leaning in slightly.
"Hey, you two better not be flirting without me," Yang shouts as she comes in, causing Ruby to stutter and back away as she gives Yang a dirty look.
"Did anyone blow up?" I ask.
"Nah. Had to punch someone to stop them from setting one off, but better a broken nose than an exploded body, right?" Yang says with a shrug. "Glynda only sent the smart ones, mostly guys with experience in disarming traps. Doesn't quite carry over to mine placement but it meant they knew to be careful. Anyway, Goodwitch says you need a nap."
"I do not need a nap, I need-"
"The fuck you don't. We'll be fighting all night, then working most of tomorrow. You gotta reserve your energy," Yang snorts. "We all do, but you've been running around like a headless chicken. Come on, you can sleep with your head between my boobs."
Ignoring Ruby's shout of 'Yang!', I sigh.
"I have a mortar to finish, first. Won't take long, but it needs the runic touches before they can move it into place," I explain, knowing she's right. That's the biggest issue of the blood moon, to be frank. It lasts so long, and we barely have enough manpower as is, never mind alternating people out to eat and sleep.
"Fine, but I have orders to literally drag you to bed if I have to," Yang admits with a playful shrug. "Never thought I'd have trouble getting you into bed."
Chuckling, I roll my eyes and get back to work.
We're in the final hours before sunset, and while Tai said that this night shouldn't be too bad compared to the third night, it'll be the test of my technology. The first two nights are less dangerous simply because it takes longer than that for the monsters to get out of the dungeon and begin their trek toward us.
So, if tonight goes well, it'll be proof that we can survive the true horde.
– Glynda Goodwitch –
Standing atop the wall, she listened as explosions sounded out in the distance. Through the trees, flashes of red and blue lit up the darkness, informing them that the traps were doing their job. How much damage it was actually doing to the horde remained to be seen, but it was a comforting idea that each flash was more dead monsters.
Taiyang, Qrowe and Summer stood on the wall beside her, ready to drop down and join the fray when needed, and rows of archers stood ready. In front of the gate, a good distance away, a horde of their own was already assembled. It was far smaller than the horde coming their way, but rows of skeletons stood perfectly still as they waited for the enemy to arrive.
For all her experience, she had only heard of Blood Moons from history books or Ozpin's tales. She knew, logically, all the details that the world did know about this phenomenon. She knew that the monsters would have many of their number turned black with white bone armour, which would be far stronger than a regular variant of the species. A Grimmified Goblin was as dangerous as a regular hobgoblin, if not more. She knew, in theory, that Blood Moons lasted around five to eight days. She knew most places under siege didn't reach the fourth.
What her reading hadn't warned her of is how damned dark it would be. The blood moon, despite being an ominous red glow in the sky, gave very little actual light in comparison to a regular moon, and she couldn't even see the treeline they were watching. Each flash illuminated the darkness, just a little, and it wasn't long until she could see the outlines of the horde as explosions went off behind them.
"Now!" Rowan shouted, getting an agreement from Yang as she activated one of his tools. It fired high into the sky, before erupting in a bright golden light. Rowan had called it a 'flare', made for the sole purpose of illumination. It should have been an encouraging thing, to not have to fight in total darkness.
As the clearing between the walls and the forest lit up, she felt her heart plummet at the sight of what seemed like hundreds of monsters already charging toward them, rushing out of the forest in a single-minded determination.
"Wait," Summer demanded, looking toward two of the 'mortar' teams. In the distance, a row of wooden 'markers' was set up and as the horde was about to reach them, she smiled grimly. "Fire."
The blast made everyone flinch back as the mortar teams began firing their runic bombs, the high arc sending them flying into the air before they began to plummet with a loud whistling sound. Despite his confidence in his creations, she saw Rowan holding his breath for impact.
The bomb landed and then… erupted. Rowan's calculations were perfect, estimating the line where each bomb would land, and as the horde was about to pass the marker, the first of the bombs hit. She had thought the blast from the mines was impressive, but the sheer flash of the mortar's explosion made her flinch back and cover her eyes reflexively.
When she lowered her hand, she stared out at the crater that stood where a marker once had been. The horde didn't slow, driven into a rage by the blood moon, but as they charged into the crater, she saw the dismembered limbs and exploded corpses they were trampling. Anything that had been in that blast range was nothing but giblets. Over at the western side, she saw a grimmified ogre charging only to get hit by one of the mortar shells directly…
Grimm Ogres were genuinely seen as threats that only a Diamond party or higher could deal with. Their sheer toughness and strength made them near-impossible for most people to fight.
She stared in disbelief at the remains of what had once been a Grimm Ogre, limbs blown apart as the massive corpse splatted to the ground. The mortar team, a trio of copper adventurers, stared in equal disbelief at what they had just done.
Two conflicting sensations filled her as the monster horde clashed with the undead horde, hope and fear in equal measure.
Hope that with Rowan's creations, they could fight and win against the Blood Moon. Fear for what it meant for the future of Remnant. For the future of warfare. As Ruby Rose began to fire into the horde, massive blasts of red energy shredding dozens of monsters in seconds, she envisioned a world where any Kingdom got access to this weaponry, and she shuddered in genuine terror.
— Bonus Scene — Joan Arc
She didn't have a fucking clue what was going on.
Nora cackled as she loaded another ice shell into the mortar, while Ren stared out into the night with a severe frown on his face.
"Fire," Ren ordered, and Joan did exactly that. It was so easy even an idiot could do it, pressing down on the marked spot until the shell was launched out through some magical means that were so far beyond her it wasn't even funny.
They'd been picked as a mortar team because… well, they weren't good enough to fight on the frontlines. Ren was smart and had good eyes, which made him good at gauging when to fire, and she and Nora could handle a mortar with ease. The only reason it was a two-woman job was to make it faster since Nora would load a shell, then grab the next to load it the second the first one left.
Plus, more importantly, Nora had a big hammer and was good at knocking things that managed to reach and climb the wall right back down.
"Team three, adjust your aim to the west. Large horde, several trolls," Rowan's voice commanded. That was them, and she gripped the mortar and slowly turned it. It wasn't easy, fixed in place to prevent it from moving during repeated firing, but it was doable. Ren looked over to the mentioned direction, holding out his hand. She kept turning until he lowered it. They'd done this several times, and she was beginning to get the hang of it. "Switch to fire shells."
"Got it!" Joan called back, hearing the sounds of fighting down at the bottom of the wall. The idealist in her wanted to be down there, with the 'heroes', fighting the horde that goes past the explosions and the undead.
But she silenced it without a second thought, because with a mortar, even a failure like her could turn grimm into smears on the ground.
"Hold fire," Ren said, staring into the distance as he raised his hand again. "And… now!"
Watching the shell fly into the air, she didn't even see it land as they were already loading another in.
"Good hit, but move just a little more to the left," Ren reported.
They could do this.